Szechuan Beef

Over the years, many American readers have requested Szechuan beef recipe on Rasa Malaysia. For those who have been waiting for this popular American-Chinese dish, this is the recipe I developed specifically for you. The reason I said so is because I have never had American-style Szechuan beef until very recently.

Szechuan beef, much like beef and broccoli, is not found in China. There is a Sichuan poached beef in a fiery chili-oil sauce, called 水煮牛肉, or literally “Water Cooked Beef” that looks like this picture. The Szechuan beef dishes found in in the US are mostly stir-fried beef in a mildly spicy sauce with assortment of vegetables. Every Chinese restaurant or Chinese buffets here has their own rendition of Szechuan beef.

This Szechuan beef is my take on PF Chang’s version. The beef is thinly sliced and marinated with cornstarch so as to achieve a velvety and tender texture, which is highly prized in Chinese cuisine. The sauce is a tad spicy, savory, and slightly sweet. The end result is good with steamed rice and I hope you will enjoy my concoction.

Actually sounds a little bit like a genuine and very common [si]chuan dish 鱼香肉丝 / fish-flavoured meat (pork) strips. It’s got pretty much the same ingredients – no fish but the salty taste comes from the oyster sauce.

While you are correct that the usual dish offered as “Szechuan beef” is a fairly insipid stir fry, my husband worked most of several years in Taiwan in the early 70s, coming home for a bit every couple of months. He developed a passion for Szechuan style recipes and one of his favorites was for a spicy “dry-fried” beef dish he titled Szechuan beef. I’ve spent several hours unsuccessfully going through my old cookbooks looking for it, but it was essentially strips of marinated beef (patted dry) fried in deep fat until crisp and chewy, drained, then stir fried with matchstick carrot sticks, pepper strips, and various aromatics–very spicy, and with a delicious chewy texture complemented by the still crisp carrots. Green beans cooked this way are also spectacular and could be used with the beef instead of carrots.

When Szechuan and Hunan style restaurants became popular in the 1980s, their menus included many dishes that were much spicier than now–boy do I ever miss them. Even PF Chang’s used to spice up their now very bland recipes.

Nice recipe but not really from Sichuan, it does not have the trademark “Mala 麻辣” hotness as there are no Szechuan peppercorns included. It also does not have any doubanjiang so the flavor of the sauce is not “Yuxiang 鱼香”. I’d say this is more of Cantonese/Southern Chinese take on the Szechuan dried-fried shredded beef “干煸牛肉絲 Gan Bian Niu Rou Si”.

Yes, correct. Most of the Chinese restaurants in the US is opened by Cantonese or Southern Chinese. But it’s called Szechuan beef in the Chinese restaurants here in the US. I know the real Szechuan beef is not like this.

Dear Rasa,
So, what does the cornstarch actually DO to the meat? You make it sound like it has some effect on tenderizing, rather than being a thickener for the sauce. I have always been curious about why they marinate with cornstarch.

I doubled this recipe tonight for family dinner. I mostly kept it the same except I left out the oyster sauce and substituted a small splash of fish sauce. I also added quite a lot more chilli oil, the kind with crunched up chillies, because no matter how hot I make it, it’s not hot enough at my house. Ever. I also added szechuan peppercorn, ground, about half a teaspoon. It was absolutely delicious.

Still not hot enough for my wife though. I put in three heaping tablespoon of chili oil,too. I was sweating and my mouth was numb. I will be making this again.